Dawlish Discussion

@Flo. On Spotlight they said that the alternatives are poor value for money. On the West Country News Programme they said it will be put out to public consultation, until next april, unless i heard wrong. Can someone tell me, unless i am missing something, what Plymouth has to do with this, as when Dawlish was not having any trains, Plymouth was getting Trains, Buses, Coaches so their public transport system was largely unaffected.

@stephen15 i think anyone downline of dawlish has a lot to say about the rail service, ask anyone who relies on the train to get to work in plymouth or beyond by a certain time each day and then ask them how it worked to take a bus instead!  i'm not sure you'd say they were unaffected.

Flo. Coach/Replacement Bus Service from Exeter St.Davids or Tiverton to Newton Abbot. Train from NA to Plymouth. Some Inconvience yes but its not Dawlish fault there was 2 storms. I did say largely unaffected. Spotlight has details. 

Yes but if you have to get somewhere by a certain time (especially work) it's not always convenient.  I still don't understand why people further down the line shouldn't have an opinion.  I may be a yokel but I can still understand others points of view.

@Flo. I respect other people`s view, but i think that if you have to get from A-B, catch a earlier bus/coach. People obviously knew that there is no trains from Exeter St.Davids -  NA. Announcement later In year, Public Consultation ends April 2015. Month before General Election.

Stephen - do you actually live here?  Did you try and get kids to school, get to work?!  Earlier bus/coach - you're having a laugh.  I couldn't meet my work colleagues for the period of railway being out of commission. 

@Flo. I dont live here but i havn`t got kids-never married. Worked for 22 years at civil service. we down here have school buses for the colleges and school children. I dont know if Dawlish has them. Anyway I respect other peoples view ,wherever they live, be it south/north england. 

@stephen How can you comment on this if you do not even live down here or have kids etc ?

I'm not having a go Stephen, I just think some people are unaware of some of the travel issues we have down here.  Yes there are coaches for schools but, for instance, if your child goes to the Grammar School in Torquay and have already paid for a huge season ticket on the train and then initially the coaches don't run early enough, this is not good enough.

If you work in Plymouth and can only get there by coach, but have to be there at a certain time (a lot of companies don't operate on flexi time), you were in trouble.

Luckily we were on the TV and my company were very easy going about my being cut off, but that doesn't mean we can be in this situation again.  I don't think looking at other options hurts.

@flo totally agree. people do not realise the hardship we suffer when something like this happens.

@Flo. Thanks for pointing that out.

@flo thanks for flagging this up - there seems to be a lot of economy in the pace of the details being dribbled out!  how contentious can it be!!!

At the risk of repeating myself from a number of similar strands:

1. The current 'path raising' at Sea Lawn is but very minor works compared with the not unexpected £400m cost, or whatever, to properly tame the waves once and for all at Dawlish.  i.e. Sea Lawn is simply fixing the bl***ing obvious to improve the odds of not have a repeat disaster for a couple of years if lucky.

2. Everyone in the SW rightly has a very big say in what happens as it affects many people and arguably the further west you are the more it affects you.  Why?  It obviously depends on the parameter you use to judge it.  But from a business point of view the really major question is, when the wall is down, how far do you have to travel to the nearest direct train to London.  If you are lucky enough to be in Dawlish the answer was 10miles?  If you lived in Penzance the answer was 110miles?  So argueably you could say Penzance has 11 times as much at stake in the outcome of a reliable railway as Dawlish does!!

3. Everyone needs to face up to the very simple truth when doing cost benefit analyses that an awful lot of money needs to be spent just to get us to the position of where we should be anyway.  The coastal wall was built as a cheap solution to an under financed railway company 170years ago.  We don't have a modern railway fit for purpose, we have a fair weather railway, albeit very scenic and iconic.  Taming the sea by spending half a billion is the only solution just to simply keep the current railway topology.

4. Irrespective of the Dawlish outcome, Oke-Tavy should be re-built, it's a no-brainer for the future of the SW.  Or at the very least the route should be protected because one day the mid Devon communities and N.Cornwall will be seen to be fully deserving of it.  I just hope to goodness that the planned Plymouth to Tavistock reopening isn't so short sightedly designed, as to include a nice lot of new houses etc crammed in at the buffers so that the line can then never be extended to Meldon.  Once that 5miles reopens we will then be looking at the totally farcical situation of having some 75% of an alternative line open!! And one day as oil runs low .... and populations inexorably rise....it will be badly regretted.  And to quote an analogy, the Germans won the world cup because they properly planned ahead for it for some 20years.  Similarly they are totally baffled by the English being so negative about protecting rail routes for future use.  We just never seem to learn...yes you DCC who built your offices right on top of the route through Tavistock!!!

p.s. @flo - i also entirely empathise with your 'commuters dilema'.

And I completely understand the absolute necessity of Dawlish keeping its station.  Devon is littered with resorts that never recovered from losing their station, Ilfracombe being perhaps the best example.